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Retain, upgrade, or replace?

Look beyond the purchase price. Compare future cash spending and internal effort across three technology options.

A planning value for staff time, not an extra cash payment. All figures use USD and constant annual costs.

Retain · 3 years$163,500Cash + internal effort value
Upgrade · 3 years$124,500Cash + internal effort value
Replace · 3 years$129,000Cash + internal effort value
Retain

Keep the current system and maintain it.

Upgrade

Improve the existing platform.

Replace

Move to a different system.

Fictional example loaded. Replace the estimates with your own.

COST IS ONE PART OF THE DECISION

Compare the full picture.

Upgrade has the lowest modeled total over 3 years. This includes internal effort value; it does not establish the best fit or a cash saving.

Retain

$163,500

Modeled total · 3 years

Cash outlay
$108,000
Internal effort value
$55,500
Internal effort
740 hours

Less transition work, but confirm supportability, security exposure, and whether current limitations are acceptable.

Upgrade

$124,500

Modeled total · 3 years

Cash outlay
$90,000
Internal effort value
$34,500
Internal effort
460 hours

Preserves familiarity. Validate compatibility, the upgrade path, and how much of the business need it resolves.

Replace

$129,000

Modeled total · 3 years

Cash outlay
$96,000
Internal effort value
$33,000
Internal effort
440 hours

Can address broader needs, but migration, integrations, training, and exit obligations need explicit evaluation.

Visible assumptions. Better questions.

Upfront cash ($)
One-time purchase, migration, and external implementation fees.
Annual cash ($)
Licenses, hosting, maintenance, and external support.
Transition effort (hours)
One-time internal work, including training and migration.
Annual internal effort (hours)
Ongoing administration and support by your own people.

Cash outlay = upfront cash + annual cash × years.
Internal effort value = (transition hours + annual internal hours × years) × hourly value.
Modeled total = cash outlay + internal effort value.

Enter only future costs. Do not count past spending, or include the same staff effort in cash and hours. These constant-cost estimates exclude taxes, financing, inflation, discounting, residual value, revenue changes, and outage losses. Totals are calculated before display rounding; differences under half a cent are treated as ties.

Before choosing: validate business fit, security, vendor support, integration dependencies, migration risk, contract exit terms, and the availability of your people. These original fictional estimates are not vendor quotes. Inputs stay in this page.

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